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Sorry, no. I saw a demo of a Xerox workstation at PARC in 1982, probably not that different from the demo Steve Jobs got. It was a lot more advanced than sugges

by not2b 3y ago

Sorry, no. I saw a demo of a Xerox workstation at PARC in 1982, probably not that different from the demo Steve Jobs got. It was a lot more advanced than suggested by this article, which seems to miss that office applications were written on top of the system the article describes and provided much of the needed functionality. As a programmer you had a much worse interface, but the programs that had been written did the work. The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto. The Mac made a lot of simplifications to make things smoother.

AlbertCory 3y ago
"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. By 1982 PARC had Dorado-based systems on Cedar. "The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? TFA ( https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-weird https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-wei... ). >Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. Not in desktop GUI land, since nobody did anything interesting commercially in desktop GUIs for those next 4 years. And of course in those 4 years Apple started the project, designed the hardware and implemented the OS, GUI, and basic programs. Lisa actually began in 1978 itself, so it took all those years until its release in 1983. By which time they'd probably also had a look at the Star's ongoing developments. Doesn't mean they didn't take a lot of their inspiration from that demo. >"The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. He's referring to the GUI concepts as implemented in it (and exhibited in those programs), not necessarily some overall GUI shell or some particular individual program. >I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star. TFA mistakenly talks about the Smalltalk GUI as if the common understanding is that Smalltalk-80s' GUI was what Apple saw and copied from Xerox. TFA then goes on to reject that Apple copied Xerox, because he finds that Smalltalk-80 GUI was hardly like a Desktop, but more like an IDE. That description of Smalltalk-80 GUI is of course correct, but he missed the crucial part: people don't say Apple copied Xerox because of Smalltalk-80, but because of Alto's (and perhaps Star's) GUI concepts. So it's not the parent who is confused, he merely replies to TFA.
  - lispm 3y ago
    Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Yes, but in addition to the other stuff they had: "Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown the Smalltalk-80 object-oriented programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto." "According to Jobs, “I thought it would be an interesting afternoon, but I had no real concept of what I’d see.” What he and his Apple engineers did see was the Alto with its bitmapped display and mouse-driven GUI, the graphical word processor, Bravo, and a few demo applications in Smalltalk, PARC’s revolutionary object-oriented programming language. This was a carefully curated demonstration created by PARC’s researchers to give a taste of what they had created without giving away any secrets deemed too precious. “It was very much a here’s-a-word-processor-there's-a-drawing-tool demo of what was working at the time,” according to PARC researcher Adele Goldberg. “What they saw everyone had seen.”"
      - masswerk 3y ago
        > "and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto" This should be better, "available on the Alto". Neither was this in the/any OS, nor was Smalltalk or Bravo/Gipsy for the matter the sole software available on the Alto. The wording suggests a consistency, which simply wasn't there. Notably, what was going on at PARC wasn't a secret: PARC published papers and key developers at Apple, like Bill Atkinson, were familiar with at least some of them. The latter were also those, who wanted Jobs to see this in real live and who accompanied him on the trip, and they came prepared. Moreover, numerous tours to PARC and its software had been given to outsiders before (compare A. Goldberg), some of these tours even more complete. However, Jobs was the first – at least in part (he later said, he totally missed out on the network and its importance) – to grasp what he was shown, which in turn convinced some of PARC personal like Larry Tesler (who was giving part of the presentation) to switch to Apple, in order to see this technology become a reality. (Jobs getting the GUI must have been some of an experience.) Obligatory link in this context (a series of polaroids from Lisa development): https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.... (Mind bitmapped graphics being documented before the visit and, probably also before this, a first prototype of a windowed document. It is also interesting to see how the influence of the PARC visit shows also as some of a distraction, and it's only when they gradually inch back towards the original window design that things start to come together. May we interpret this as a process of emancipation from PARC's influence?)
GeekyBear 3y ago
> The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto. The Alto had a command line interface. The Lisa had a standard GUI. Some of the programs you ran on an Alto implemented their own custom GUI, but each program was free to follow it's own GUI conventions. There was no standard. The two systems really were very different. You can still find copies of the Alto User Handbook online so you can read about how it worked. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users_Handbook_Sep79.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users_Handbook_...
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  > The Alto had a command line interface. That was true, but you really didn't spend a lot of time on the command line. It wasn't like Unix. People didn't spend their time inventing options for their command lines; they sunk it into the GUI instead.
masswerk 3y ago
The demo Jobs & Co were given did not involve Xerox Star. (It was still the experimental PARC software.) The Xerox Star interface and OS were developed by Xerox SDD. (One in practice rather problematic side of the Star was the extensive licensing that came with it. You needed an extra license for about every feature. Italic text? Get a new license, ect. This probably hindered its success as much as its – by virtue of this licensing policy ever growing – price tag. Also, the Star's still discrete processor may have been somewhat challenged at times. On the other hand, other than the Lisa, it feature full network integration. Regarding the end user experience, it was probably noticeable different from the Lisa, as there was no drag&drop and direct manipulation on the OS side of things. Rather, it was: click to select, press keyboard key to select function, use mouse to execute. Technically, the Star relied on property sheets for objects, which could be either presented as menus, button arrays or dialogs. Notably, this did not involve hierarchical structures, so there were no hierarchical menus.)
- kps 3y ago
  People can try the emulator.¹ Key to understanding is that GUI operations were two-handed, descending directly from NLS (people have all seen the ‘mother of all demos’², right?). Right hand on the mouse, left hand on the left function key cluster³ — one of the Star papers is explicit that the left cluster was a direct substitution for the NLS/Alto chord set. A very noticeable difference from the familiar Lisa lineage is Move and Copy vs Cut and Paste — there was no clipboard. (Here I think Star got it right and Tesler got it wrong: the condition of the clipboard containing invisible fragile state is a mode, and a worse one than move-in-progress.) ¹ https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/Darkstar https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/Darkstar ² https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/ https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/ ³ https://digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/ https://digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/

by not2b 3y ago

AlbertCory 3y ago

"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. By 1982 PARC had Dorado-based systems on Cedar. "The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star.

coldtea 3y ago
>"Sorry, no" no to what? "this article" - what article? TFA ( https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-weird https://collindonnell.com/the-xerox-smalltalk-80-gui-was-wei... ). >Jobs came to PARC in December 1978. 4 years later was an eternity. Not in desktop GUI land, since nobody did anything interesting commercially in desktop GUIs for those next 4 years. And of course in those 4 years Apple started the project, designed the hardware and implemented the OS, GUI, and basic programs. Lisa actually began in 1978 itself, so it took all those years until its release in 1983. By which time they'd probably also had a look at the Star's ongoing developments. Doesn't mean they didn't take a lot of their inspiration from that demo. >"The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto" -- except that the Alto had many different programs, each with their own interface, so I don't know what you're referring to. He's referring to the GUI concepts as implemented in it (and exhibited in those programs), not necessarily some overall GUI shell or some particular individual program. >I guess you're talking about Smalltalk, but that was a tiny part of what people at Xerox were doing. It had a negligible influence on the Star. TFA mistakenly talks about the Smalltalk GUI as if the common understanding is that Smalltalk-80s' GUI was what Apple saw and copied from Xerox. TFA then goes on to reject that Apple copied Xerox, because he finds that Smalltalk-80 GUI was hardly like a Desktop, but more like an IDE. That description of Smalltalk-80 GUI is of course correct, but he missed the crucial part: people don't say Apple copied Xerox because of Smalltalk-80, but because of Alto's (and perhaps Star's) GUI concepts. So it's not the parent who is confused, he merely replies to TFA.
- lispm 3y ago
  Didn't they demo the Smalltalk system to him?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Yes, but in addition to the other stuff they had: "Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC, where he was shown the Smalltalk-80 object-oriented programming environment, networking, and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto." "According to Jobs, “I thought it would be an interesting afternoon, but I had no real concept of what I’d see.” What he and his Apple engineers did see was the Alto with its bitmapped display and mouse-driven GUI, the graphical word processor, Bravo, and a few demo applications in Smalltalk, PARC’s revolutionary object-oriented programming language. This was a carefully curated demonstration created by PARC’s researchers to give a taste of what they had created without giving away any secrets deemed too precious. “It was very much a here’s-a-word-processor-there's-a-drawing-tool demo of what was working at the time,” according to PARC researcher Adele Goldberg. “What they saw everyone had seen.”"
    - masswerk 3y ago
      > "and most importantly the WYSIWYG, mouse-driven graphical user interface provided by the Alto" This should be better, "available on the Alto". Neither was this in the/any OS, nor was Smalltalk or Bravo/Gipsy for the matter the sole software available on the Alto. The wording suggests a consistency, which simply wasn't there. Notably, what was going on at PARC wasn't a secret: PARC published papers and key developers at Apple, like Bill Atkinson, were familiar with at least some of them. The latter were also those, who wanted Jobs to see this in real live and who accompanied him on the trip, and they came prepared. Moreover, numerous tours to PARC and its software had been given to outsiders before (compare A. Goldberg), some of these tours even more complete. However, Jobs was the first – at least in part (he later said, he totally missed out on the network and its importance) – to grasp what he was shown, which in turn convinced some of PARC personal like Larry Tesler (who was giving part of the presentation) to switch to Apple, in order to see this technology become a reality. (Jobs getting the GUI must have been some of an experience.) Obligatory link in this context (a series of polaroids from Lisa development): https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.... (Mind bitmapped graphics being documented before the visit and, probably also before this, a first prototype of a windowed document. It is also interesting to see how the influence of the PARC visit shows also as some of a distraction, and it's only when they gradually inch back towards the original window design that things start to come together. May we interpret this as a process of emancipation from PARC's influence?)

GeekyBear 3y ago

> The Lisa end user experience wasn't that different from the Xerox Alto. The Alto had a command line interface. The Lisa had a standard GUI. Some of the programs you ran on an Alto implemented their own custom GUI, but each program was free to follow it's own GUI conventions. There was no standard. The two systems really were very different. You can still find copies of the Alto User Handbook online so you can read about how it worked. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users_Handbook_Sep79.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/Alto_Users_Handbook_...

AlbertCory 3y ago
> The Alto had a command line interface. That was true, but you really didn't spend a lot of time on the command line. It wasn't like Unix. People didn't spend their time inventing options for their command lines; they sunk it into the GUI instead.

masswerk 3y ago

The demo Jobs & Co were given did not involve Xerox Star. (It was still the experimental PARC software.) The Xerox Star interface and OS were developed by Xerox SDD. (One in practice rather problematic side of the Star was the extensive licensing that came with it. You needed an extra license for about every feature. Italic text? Get a new license, ect. This probably hindered its success as much as its – by virtue of this licensing policy ever growing – price tag. Also, the Star's still discrete processor may have been somewhat challenged at times. On the other hand, other than the Lisa, it feature full network integration. Regarding the end user experience, it was probably noticeable different from the Lisa, as there was no drag&drop and direct manipulation on the OS side of things. Rather, it was: click to select, press keyboard key to select function, use mouse to execute. Technically, the Star relied on property sheets for objects, which could be either presented as menus, button arrays or dialogs. Notably, this did not involve hierarchical structures, so there were no hierarchical menus.)

kps 3y ago
People can try the emulator.¹ Key to understanding is that GUI operations were two-handed, descending directly from NLS (people have all seen the ‘mother of all demos’², right?). Right hand on the mouse, left hand on the left function key cluster³ — one of the Star papers is explicit that the left cluster was a direct substitution for the NLS/Alto chord set. A very noticeable difference from the familiar Lisa lineage is Move and Copy vs Cut and Paste — there was no clipboard. (Here I think Star got it right and Tesler got it wrong: the condition of the clipboard containing invisible fragile state is a mode, and a worse one than move-in-progress.) ¹ https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/Darkstar https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/Darkstar ² https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/ https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/ ³ https://digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/ https://digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/keyboard/